A net is a generalization of a string which is designed to facilitate two-dimensional printing on ascii terminals. It consists of a rectangular array of characters subdivided horizontally by an imaginary baseline.
Operations on nets also accept strings by interpreting a string as a rectangle of height one with the baseline just below it. In fact, the parent of String is Net.
Multiple nets per line can be sent to an output file with << but care must be taken to use endl to end lines, for nets with new line characters embedded in them will be displayed in an unexpected way.
Warning: if so many characters are written to a file that an internal buffer is filled before the line ends or first net is seen, then the buffer will be flushed, and writing a net subsequently will produce an unexpected result.
Operations on nets:
Formatting expressions:
See also String.